Tag: Vinaya

If we are accepted as a disciple of another Sangha member from them we may get more names for that master to use to call us. Please note that students of a master are not in the same category as disciple. It is possible for a master to have many students but few will have even one or more disciples. The disciples are earlier fully ordained as Sangha and the lineage holder in that master’s line, the students are not.

Regarding my invite for Sangha members to contribute their wisdom to Sangha Conduct-Advice to Americans in Robes.

Only Sangha fully ordained in robes presently in good standing are asked to contribute.

Living anywhere you have to deal with Americans in robes, or if you are an American in robes; any ethnic group, any tradition. Declare your tradition and give me a brief autobiography

Living in solitude on your own or living in community.

Any level of English, it will be edited for typos and grammar as best I can do.

ANY STYLE, poetry, plain speak, write like you telling another Sangha member some needed advice. Share stories if you wish, keep the dharma names in them or make an obvious fake name, something like Ven. ChattyKathy or Ven. Snipesalot… you know be creative or not. ANY way you write is perfectly ok.

The deadline is Monday June 24, 2013.

And no limits to length on your contribution, but at least a page not a sentence. No Koan, no gungan; Haiku if you must but need to include a lesson or verbiage to add to it or increase our understanding in the Vinaya or Buddha dharma or life in general.

All your work if you have citations include them if not I will find what I can if citing sutras or other ppls words declare in the sentence (paraphrased/written by/from NAME if have year or page great if not just a name).

Write for the Sangha not the public.

It will be on Amazon through my account for sale. Selling a book there does not make you rich, I’m not rich, occasionally I get a partial tank of gas out of it every few months or so. Mostly it’s for benefit of future generations. You can sell it too, I’ll give you advice a bit later on that.

Good men and women: Please respect the teacher and the audience. Listen attentively in mutual tolerance and good nature. Please no debates and no coercion or you will be asked to leave. These dharma talks are open to all.

Dana (Donations) accepted there is no set fee.

Calm Clarity Temple is in the planning stages. It is following in structure and practices of the oldest form of Buddhism in the USA: Chinese Buddhism. Chinese Buddhism has the oldest unbroken 2-part Sangha of Bhikshu and Bhikshuni with no married clergy. This temple is a nunnery for training and offering services and charitable care to the public.

This is also a translator temple. Dharma work translating and training translators here so the translations is available to the public in English from the Chinese Taisho Edition of the Mahayana Tripitaka which is comprehensive in that it has the complete Pali collection from Theravada tradition, Esoteric collection which includes the Tibetan collection, Vinaya collection of all schools including Theravada (Tibet is Mahayana), Abhi dharma collection of all schools in both traditions of Theravada & Mahayana, commentaries and verses of esteem masters of various lineages. Very little of the limited accessible translations are available in English.

Books: type: “Ven Hong Yang” when you visit http://www.amazon.com for available book list. Here is a nice photo of a Chinese Bhikshuni on alms round.

I had expected some fanfare at least a post comment or two on Facebook oh well people are busy. but I finally picked the temple name.

Calm Clarity Temple

It came from knowing what attributes I carry and promote as the abbess. My main attributes are Calm and Clarity. I am not saying I am the best but it’s the attributes I want to carry forth as a signature of this temple and it’s mission to meet the communities needs here and carry on my translation efforts to have a complete Mahayana English Tripitaka of the Taisho Edition of the Chinese Mahayana Tripitaka.

The reason this edition is so important is that it is inclusive of the Pali Cannon and has an Esoteric Division (yes, people Esoteric came from China through India as well as accumulations of the effects of adaptations to local religious beliefs and cultures. It has all the schools in Buddhism in both Theravada and Mahayana including I suspect some of the older ones, that are not all translated out into English, what we have today is scholars works and they are not accessible, largely out of print or not available to the public. It has commentaries, verses, records, and lineages of our Sangha, this may not be interesting reading but it is really good for us to know what bits from history we can glean from these being translated.

I honor my interest in Daoism with the recognition of a specific school, the Complete Reality School, it’s burned it’s place in my noggin. I like it very much, I also have a title memorized “The Master Who Embraces Simplicity” from my early days of study of Chinese culture included the Three Religions of Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism. I liked monastic life for it was easy fit for my lifestyle the way I lived it and the way I thought about my life. To honor me, and my past lives I chose Calm and Clarity for the temple attributes. When you choose a temple name it’s to have a purpose to benefit the country, the states, the county and the town in which you live; that’s responsibility towards society creating positive conditions for prosperity, reduce conflicts and improve the quality of life for everyone.

The mission carries on the Bhikshuni one. To create awareness of VinayaSangha residing in the USA. To provide Buddhist services and offer instruction in Buddhism to the public, and conduct creative, charitable, and education programs for interested persons.

The primary specialty is the translation of the MahayanaTripitaka Taisho Edition in Chinese to English. Serving as translator, education of translators, networking with translators around the world, being a part of the development of an international database the would provide free online access to all English translated Tripitaka materials.

Peace in every step, trust in precepts, certainty in mind helps a Sangha endure. This is the only way to endure difficult times. There is no other way if you wish to remain a monk or nun with precepts. Otherwise do not wear our robes. Go back and stay in lay-life. How we endure is based upon the guidance of the Vinaya precepts we were given.

It is a parajika offense to support suicide by writing your support for it through images, posters, online posts, providing means of suicide the implements the knowledge on how to do it, the people to carry the instruments for your behalf to give to the person you want to kill. Arguing with a Sangha member in favor of the act of self-immolation in and out of Tibet is a parajika offense by written words or in speeches. Because you say it with your words… get it. Now GET OUT OF THOSE ROBES !!! I have argued with Tibetan Sangha particularly it’s the Westerners who really argue and I have enough. You westerners get a clue, you are not Tibetan even robes. Thus not supported by their system. Parajika offense is the most serious and you can never abandon it and call your self monks.

It is pointless to argue with anyone in the freetibet bandwagon, they are incapable of logic. Their leader promotes suicide, it is so shocking that this thinking comes from the West to effectively kill, probably end Tibetan Buddhism as it was. Every time I do engage them, by standing up for Vinaya and supporting life, they accuse me of being a Chinese govt supporter or a spy! I mean, really that no kind of logic. I am defending the right to life, not debating, I am standing up for the sake of the Tibetan Sangha not politics. Only those two things are my concerns in countering statements that are pro-suicide.

You cannot debate Buddhism people, I hate the way western people think their rambling emotional aggressive accusatory style in speech is debate when it is not. Buddhist debate is seriously controlled by the Sangha, and done in privacy of the Sangha sima. Buddhist debate is only done for proof of education and shows the level of understanding by the student, its specialized in style and has to be learned. It is not the stuff of forums or Facebook or comments field.

They don’t debate they just bitch. They don’t read, just use emotional statements, they don’t accept logic. If you counter with logic and reputable sources they just get emotional like teenagers do when they are overwhelmed. It is a rancid movement full of emotion, abuse, and does not favor life. When it started early one the movement was pure in intention but not effective.

Now the only effective thing is that the FreeTibet movement is doing is that they are good at marketing, selling posters, Buddhist goods, tshirts with burning monks images, and buttons and the like. They are emotional campaigners who promote officially suicide for political gain of a very, very few people. Most of them do not understand the history of Tibet, nor it’s warrior and warlord society, it was brutal, it was aggressive, repressive, and offered nothing to the whole of the country.

Westerners are not used to monks who commit violent acts, nor will they easily accept teachings from a tradition that is violent. It does not accord with their own understanding of Buddhism and the Sangha. Monks who abandon their Vinaya precepts and kill, fight, torture, enslave and many still do. I am not saying there are no Tibetan monks who uphold strictly the Vinaya for there are indeed many that do and some are highly attained and they do not touch politics at all. But those monks who abandoned their precepts they go back the monastery or commit the acts within the monastery in their robes thus they mock their preceptors, their elders and the saints, and those formerly held precepts and preach kindness and compassion with beautiful smiles on their faces.

If there are robed Sangha members joining with the FreeTibet movement with this purpose then upon the joining they have openly committed parajika offense. They are no longer considered monks by the rest of our global Vinaya Sangha.

this is the first Dalai Lama in Tibet.

Stephanie Brigden, director of the Free Tibet campaign group, said the spate of protests were “aimed at sending the next generation of China’s unelected regime a clear signal that Tibetans will continue to fight for their freedom”.

The protests have divided exiled Tibetans with some seeing them as a legitimate protest while others worry they contravene Buddhist beliefs in the sanctity of life.

This shows that they do not have a large amount of support to continue this horrific trend. Since 2011 they have promoted this one method as a means to force China to end political repression of Tibet and declare it independent.

Many gathered for a candle-lit prayer vigil in Dharamshala, home to about 10,000 exiled Tibetans, on Thursday in front of a large poster bearing the faces of those who have self-immolated.

last paragraph states:

Last week, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay urged China to address Tibetans’ grievances saying she recognised their “intense sense of frustration and despair which has led them to resort to such extreme means”.

Here is a good short article on CNN.com and reasonable summary of why it is not working for those promoting suicide in Tibet.

So why does the self-immolation of one man accomplish so much, but the same gesture performed by so many others accomplishes nothing? Perhaps the question should be phrased differently, because a closer look at Bouazizi’s deed and the Tibetan cases reveals that it is something other than the sheer number of self-immolations that makes them a catalyst for change.

Tunisians could easily identify with Bouazizi’s extreme predicament. His actions spoke to the community’s shared frustration and despair. But the demands of Tibetan self-immolators are varied. Some want a “free Tibet,” as do all Tibetan exiles, but others only want freedom of religion, or political autonomy, or the opportunity to study in Tibetan as opposed to Chinese, or the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet.

Self-immolations that prompt political change are extraordinary and rare events. The ancient Greeks had two different words for time: chronos for ordinary time and kairos for time of special quality — a particularly propitious time for which our “right time” is a rather weak translation. For self-immolations to be politically successful, they have to happen in kairos. Bouazizi, Đúc and Palach had many imitators, but none since have achieved so much.

That’s why the high number of self-immolations among Tibetans lately could be read as an implicit admission of failure. Even though the first self-immolation by a former Tibetan monk, Thupten Ngodup, on April 27, 1998, in New Delhi, had some public impact, it failed to cause the political commotion that Bouazizi triggered in the Arab world. Nor have any of the other Tibetan self-immolators since.

Ok, since after this the piece is after all an opinion, gets sloppy. Instead of saying more constructive and effective methods should be offered and participated by Tibetans the writer goes on to state that since the young teenagers who have only known occupied Tibet are doing it, they must be doing it for the attention. So therefore the most effective means is suicide because it keeps the free Tibet issue in the world’s mindset and eventually we will get tired of it and do something!?

when you are in flames your presence cannot be ignored anymore.

It is a shouting game of sorts, except that no party shouts. The Tibetans express themselves by burning; the Chinese authorities do the same by shooting Tibetans. Then, another monk or nun engages in self-expression and everything starts anew.

Palden Gyatso, a Tibetan monk who spent more than 30 years in Chinese prisons and labor camps, once said: “For those who use brute force, there is nothing more insulting than a victim’s refusal to acknowledge their power.”

Rarely has the desire for recognition been so desperate and moving.

That’s how the article ended. Approval granted, gee… I guess this mean that CNN supports suicide to get attention???!!! And yes it just an opinion piece.

This is not a healthy turn for Western minds, suicides are illegal in our country. In fact if the person survives one there is the inevitable court date to grant a mental facility authority over their life with repeated court appearances to monitor the person. All to protect their right to life which they threw away or keep throwing away. I think with our problems in our own country with a sharp increase of suicide among soldiers, depressed persons, emotional persons that CNN does not need to end an article showing the Tibetans want attention so they are now getting kids to kill themselves in Tibet because those kids got influenced because they were born in Tibet and thus are a product of the new Tibet. The lame line concludes… awwwh it’s so sad… but moving??? Huh? moving as in inspiring??? where? whom? I don’t think so!! It’s suicide for attention.

Then I cam across a bitter fight over a name change.., a name change! There are factions in Dharmasala right now being pushed by many Westerners to promote free speech… brentwerner is a vocal promoter. They changed it from TGIE tibetan government in exile to CTA central tibetan authority… And now life and limb are at risk, and those western supportors are confused… saye whtf? it’s free speech man… they openly criticize the repression, saying why now the Dalai Lama becomes the same s the Chinese govt, a Maoist.. well they said he stepping backward into what was Tibetan history of internal conflict….well he did study Mao they said and liked it way back in the 60s when the same fight erupted over people promoted to power.

Western ppl need to stay out of it, stop condescending to a foreign ex-pates who abandoned their country and took their wealth with them. Tibet has a long history of warlords among their people that was the reason they feel in the DL time, and in the past. Now it comes again in India. I wonder how long India will tolerate them.

Tibetan Buddhism is riddled with violence in Tibet and outside it. The attempted killing of Katrol Rinpoche by his own teacher and his repeated rapes is only the first time we hear from a victim directly. It has used the Tibetan warlord tactics fully, which means they abandon their precepts as monks to carry out politics. This is the norm for them. I now because what I read about them will not acknowledge their lineage as Vinaya. For they have admitted they openly abandon precepts to carry out gains in political power. I will not support Tibetan Buddhism as it is. It must reform to be considered Buddhist to begin to regain their ancient wealth in Buddhist history and contributions to it they must retreat back into the guidance of good monks and nuns. I am not saying there are not good monks and nuns who never abandon their precepts in Tibet for any reason. There certainly are. However, regarding Vinaya precepts being abandoned freely by the monks that hold them, this is certainly shameful and will bring the downfall of Tibetan Buddhism.

Many in the West are naive, especially those who jump on the freetibet movement after studying in Tibetan Center. Later they leave, and it’s the case now because of this warlord mentality over-reaching the guidance of the Triple Refuge and 5 Precepts they were given. As people West lose patience with the suicides they will withdraw their donations. Thus inhibiting the growth of authentic teachings being offered and hurt the potential for their continue practice in the West.

Right now, I see most of the intellectuals in the West are gone, leaving the sincere but new to the culture, the crazies, the emotionally weak, the depressed, the psychotic and those you really do not need in your movement. Right now I see anarchists joining your movement for the sheer joy of destruction, yes I’ve checked their FB walls, they care only for anarchy, not about Tibet, not about your causes or your conflicts.

2,555 years ago Buddha passed away leaving the disciples and the rest of the Sangha to remember his teachings and pass them along to the next generations. Very little has changed in the Sangha who carefully follows the Vinaya which are his guidelines of monastic conduct and instructed in his last bequest. They carried Buddha’s teachings (the Dharma) to various countries teaching and forming practice places for generations with a great deal of sacrifice and effort.

Recently in media by Buddhist orientated sites online and in print through Tricycle, Buddhadharma, and Shambala Sun much has been made about the national form that Buddhist followers should or as they assume will eventually take in the USA.

Their Protestantism of Buddhism or rather a sanitizing or erasing/rewriting of Buddha’s history and rejection of what they identify as irrelevant to modern Americans today. This means all the ethnic Buddhists from Thailand, Sri Lanka, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Korea, India, Tibet, Nepal, Indonesia, Phillipines, Malaysia or other American countries or Europe are to be cleansed and shunned from Americans or American Buddhists as it starts with white men who are protestants who already rejected the catholics because they have monks and nuns… or maybe they are jewish who didn’t like christians at all and or even those who prefer to embrace every oddball newly created religion and market it.

They are trying to dummy-down traditional Buddhism because they couldn’t figure out how to make it work for themselves. Now they are trying to keep it elite and promoting a new version or a rather a odd form of Japanese Buddhism; Wow, even to do that is to disparage the efforts of the Japanese Buddhists in our American history. But a recent picture in a news article features Japanese robed zen married clergy, a couple (women are nuns only in Japanese Buddhist tradition and not to hold priest roles like the men can opt for marriage or monk’s life) in a zendo. The writer asks “What’s an American Buddhist? http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/whats-an-american-buddhist/2012/06/17/gJQAJCQrjV_blog.html

Well, it’s a circular article first stripping away the Triple Jewel. No Sangha, no ethnic trappings as they are not considered true or authentic enough to be Buddhist or relevant. Then at the very end it says careful least 900 years later the adherents reject the efforts of the fabled American Buddhists who magically created a new world order of Buddhists here.

One way to look at this question is through the example of practice. When done correctly, what Buddhist meditators refer to as “sitting”–whether following the vipassana or zazen (or other) approaches to sitting meditation–does not rely on ceremonial chanting and recitations and actions that typically surround collective meditation sessions. This is not to say such ceremonial activities normally performed in an ancient or modern Eastern language are not useful or helpful. This is only to say they are not a necessity for the gradual expansion of consciousness that is the result of regular meditation. If one accepts this basic premise, which can be supported by the sutras attributed to the Buddha, then the conclusion that North Americans could conceivably develop their own Buddhist tradition some day is perfectly rational, if not probable.

This is based on opinion and not on reality, meditation has always been taught as a method but not the exclusive one, the first thing Buddhists do worldwide is to take the Triple Refuge and 5 Precepts. The next thing they do is join in services that always recite sutras and repeat the Triple Jewel in refuge and action, join in volunteer work in the community and when it’s time and there is an opportunity they choose or not to sit on a cushion with the goal of being enlightened eventually. This provides the stable framework necessary before one sits on the cushions.

2,555 years the core of Buddhist practice has always been formed from the Triple Jewel, being carried and protected by the Sangha who observes the Vinaya. Also because people who come to Buddhism from new countries took the time to study Buddhism in it’s traditional form and upheld it, so the Buddhist culture developed as the Buddha instructed us Sangha who traveled to adapt to the countries conditions and culture with lots of variations in languages, practices and kept the core that is the Triple Jewel. The problem in the USA and in many parts of the world is that there is no one identified unified culture. We are a global society in the USA in reality, much of the myth the elitist create is not real and not reflecting the reality of the people in the USA. There is no one culture. There can be no one form of Buddhism defining the United States and that is really ok. The myth is there must be one form of Buddhism for each country, that’s the fakery being created by these elitists.

North American Buddhists are likely to create their own traditions and schools of thought, but they should do so with the awareness that they are forging a new Buddhist culture, not the ‘true’ Buddhist culture.

This is so strange that it is very insulting to North American Buddhists anywhere. There is no need to forge a new Buddhist culture at all. It does not work. People in history have tried and when they diverge from the Triple Jewel they are not Buddhist at all, their movements become perverted and vanish.

The worst kind of approach a Westerner would take is to accept wholeheartedly without question any practice offered from any teacher without investigating and studying the history and knowing the standard teachings of Buddha and his disciples. So ‘wholesale acceptance’ of Buddhism from the East is not likely the problem here. It is lack of acceptance and adaptability. Just the last two.

Also they seem to have a need to make their own piss in the snow, a male pre-occupation. That last bit is sadly the reason there is an effort by rags that call themselves the voice of American Buddhists or rather trying right now to lead the Buddhist movement with their money and media forming a horrific laughable council of teachers that fell on it’s face and nobody paid attention to it other than to point them out. Led by the protestant versions of Japanese Buddhism and fringe trend setting teachers and all their writers who make them money… virtually ignoring the Sangha “”(they had one show Bhikkhu Bodhi who got rightfully upset with them and whom they posted as somehow he misunderstood..or he mis-heard them and gee wasn’t that embarrassing for him to explode on them during the conference type post on their blog) on whose back they cruelly stepped on to reach their goal as King of the Mountain, they virtually stood and pissed on the the living Jewels, all the while laughing in the faces of those who donate and sacrifice to make Buddhist temples and monasteries in the Americas. This is soooo christian and not worthy of what is American today.

This sanitizing of Buddhism is wrong. It is a symptom of lack of effort and study of Buddha dharma. It’s rote repetition of wrong teachings based on fear of loss of their own leadership due to aging and somehow they must keep their flame alive and make a historical memory so their efforts don’t seem wasted to others. The fact of the matter is the hippies are old and their start into Buddhism was filled with false intentions, most are failed monks and they are damn mad that people did not support them when they were innocents in robes, so they formed their careers by damning the robes and those that wear them. All of them… look up the writers for yourself in the rags, tricycle, shambala sun, buddha dharma, the big 3 have featured all white… and all secular people claiming to be experts and leaders of Americans ‘cuz they failed to be monks.

They said they failed to be monks because they failed to get enough dana to do as they want to do (and become hits in their homelands). Instead they were ignored perhaps bored in their robes, fearing poverty and they lacked the balls to stick it out they left their robes because there is no money in them. Then these ex-monks damned repeatedly the very people who had virtuous roots that helped them succeed and go forth and being accepted.

Playing king of the mountain pushing off their competitors. They promoted themselves as experts saying they have really represented Americans cuz they can have sex and create families… and they want their kids to be able to participate fully in their activities in the zendo cuz they don’t feel welcome anyplace but where they want to go and meditate while they ignore how bored their kids are waiting for them and let their kids run around doing things unsupervised while they zone out in hippie bliss or their mental version of it.

I’m sorry this is not how Americans do things, they do things by hard work, patience and sticking things out enduring because they know what really works. This fad by elitists is misleading and harmful and it does NOT meet the needs of common folk and it’s common folk that need proper Triple Jewels not fads. They aren’t looking for trends while they work on the line or pack boxes into a truck, they are looking for a community that is stable, intelligent, active in the town, around the corner or even in the grocery…. but not at the expense of their own minds. That’s where traditional Vinaya Buddhism excels, it’s stable it has lots of variety and enough well trained Sangha of monks and nuns to be able to endure and offer Buddha dharma as requested without all the bangs and whistles of slick rags or media blitz… and we will be long enduring whether the elites want to come to us while we are busy meeting the needs of the community where we live and reside in the Americas in and out of temples. At my estimate we are well over 10,000 Sangha living in the USA alone and not all of us are ethnic imports from overseas but created, born and raised right here from every ethnic group that can be thought of here. Here are some Iowas some Califnornians, some Nova Scotians, some Germans, some Chinese, a few Texans, some Burmese, and a majority of whom are Midwestern people as common as you can get and their shenanigans while enjoying traditional Buddhist offerings.